Most of us have resolved to pray more. And most of us have watched that resolve quietly die within a few days. We did not abandon the idea on purpose. We did not decide that prayer was unimportant. The resolve simply stopped breathing, and we moved on without noticing.

What if we could examine that failure the way a forensic pathologist examines a body? What if we could open it up, look inside, and identify a cause of death?

That question may sound clinical, but it is a deeply personal process. The distance between wanting to pray and actually praying is not a mystery of willpower. It is usually a matter of a few identifiable obstacles that, once named, can be addressed. And if we are going to name them, we should start by looking at someone who never struggled with any of them.

I have been thinking about what Jesus did the night before he chose his twelve apostles. Luke tells us that he went out to a mountain and prayed all night (Luke 6:12). All night. Not a quick devotional before bed. Not thirty minutes of journaling. He climbed a mountain after an exhausting stretch of ministry, and he talked to his Father until the sun came up.

What makes this even more striking is what comes immediately before and immediately after that prayer. Before it, the Pharisees were seething because Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. After it, Jesus chooses Judas. The man who would betray him. The all-night prayer sits right between religious fury and an appointment with treachery, and Luke wants us to see all three together.

I think there is something here for us, and it has less to do with Sabbath rules than we might expect.